6/13/2017

Intro complete. I wrote a sort of poem/epitaph that's etched on the stones in the Gaelic ruins where the coven temple once stood. The back story of how the necromancer/druid clan split came about is completely detailed in a sort of epic Illiad/Inferno canto, with a modern group of college students stumbling across it during a grad school project. What happens to them as a result of disturbing the ruins will really add some meat to the series and drop some hints about what lays ahead in the second and third installments of the original Necropotence character and how he will go about trying to raise the dead on earth.

30:

The second part of the "First of the Three" series, also part of the Necropotence arc. In the previous installments we know there's a stone that he uses to absorb blood and manipulate life energy, and a bladed kris that he carries everywhere, always incorporating it in to his rituals and all that. The stone and the kris are both artifacts that play a very key role in the entire thing and they are almost characters of their own. I intend to make this story a sort of hunting, serial killer diary about the poor sap that the blade chooses to carry out its requirement for 30 souls, since the nether doesn't allow the original necromancer to complete the sacrifices without having someone do it for him. The reason for that and the flavor this adds will also be a great addition to the arc. We're about 1,000 words in to this one.

Liquid Blue (short story version):

I'm a little stuck. I'm not sure if I'll bring back Anhedonius Alpha and have him return (and I do have a good, non plot hole explanation for how he comes back after incinerating himself in a furnace). It may be a story told through the eyes of a lot of other junkies and how Mercer floods the streets with a sort of grand experiment that results in furthering his agenda. Part of it may be told by Mercer himself. Maybe it will all be Mercer. Maybe it will be Mercer, junkies, and Alpha, all mishmashed together. I'm not sure yet. Oh yeah, the whole vampire story arc is completely axed, only because there are too many people doing it, and it's just tired and overdone and I want to stand out with something unique. My take on them, as they are a favorite horror topic on mine.... well, it doesn't matter. I'll write some shorts about them, but the novel I was writing that merges Necropotence and LB together is just too grand, too tryhard, too ribbony, and it's been very painful for me to admit that I have to just throw out 50,000 words of multiple leapfrogged years of work, but you have to make the tough calls and cut something if it's been sitting in your slush pile for three years.

Rebound:

This is a fun little standalone story about a murderous entity that possesses its victims, and the man who is hunting it and its vessels in order to rid the world of it for good. I have a pretty good outline for this one, unlike everything else, since it's an independent story like Install. I've been devoting more time to this since I really want a standalone more than adding on to my previous series. We're about 6k words in to this one and it may cap out around 12-15k like Anhedonius. I am really looking forward to putting up a draft on GoogleDocs but it's not quite ready yet.

If you're in my beta reader circle or you've been editing for me, I want to say thank you, thank you, THANK YOU. I've been working 60-70 hours a week and although I force myself to bust out 2-3k words when I get home before I pass out, the quality of that writing is definitely lower than when I have a day off and put in 4-5 hours on something, and without Marianne, Ashley, Monika Lain, Robel, the Mad Catter, Elias, Josef .... damn, there are so many more, but I owe you the world. If I left you out, you know who you are, and I am eternally grateful in your debt.

I hope your summer is going well. This is the best one I've had in 5 years. This past Sunday night at a Pathway meeting, I celebrated six months clean and sober with no drugs or alcohol. It's the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, to earn a little chip that's worth less than five cents. But what it represents? Freedom. For me, that means the shackles are gone, my brain is normal again, and my creative juices aren't dilluted with poison. It's so good to be back, to be healthy, to be moving forward towards goals I set for myself back in 2011-2012, even though those goals stagnated under the weight of addiction for so long.

My next post will 1000% guaranteed include a GoogleDoc link for something, even if it's incomplete. I promise. And even though many of my promises have been empty and worthless in the past, I hope I'm proving to my faithful readers that they carry weight again.